In this article

Packaging Universal Windows apps for Windows 10

09/30/2015

15 minutes to read

In this article

To sell your Universal Windows app or distribute it to other users, you need to create an appxupload package for it. When you create the appxupload, another appx package will be generated to use for testing and sideloading. You can distribute your app directly by sideloading the appx package to a device. (What is sideloading?).

For Windows 10, you generate one package (.appxupload) that can be uploaded to the Windows Store. Your app is then available to be installed and run on any Windows 10 device.

(If you need to create an app package for a Windows 8.1 app, go here.)

Once you’ve done this, you are ready to sell your app in the Store. If you have a line-of-business (LOB) app, that you don’t plan to sell because it is for internal users only, you can sideload this app to install it on any Windows 10 device.

Before packaging your app

Test your app: Before you package your app for store submission, make sure it works as expected on all device families that you plan to support. These device families may include desktop, mobile, Surface Hub, XBOX, IoT devices, or others.

Optimize your app: You can use Visual Studio’s profiling and debugging tools to optimize the performance of your Universal Windows app. For example, the Timeline tool for UI responsiveness, the memory Usage tool, the CPU Usage tool, and more. Learn about them here.

Check .NET Native compatibility (for VB and C# apps): With the Universal Windows Platform, there is now a new native compiler that will improve the runtime performance of your app. With this change, it is highly recommended that you test your app in this compilation environment. By default, the Release build configuration enables the .NET native toolchain, so it is important to test your app with this Release configuration and check that your app behaves as expected. Some common debugging issues that can happen with .NET Native are explained in more detail here.

Configure an app package

The app manifest file (package.appxmanifest.xml) has the properties and settings that are required to create your app package. For example, properties in the manifest file describe the image to use as the tile of your app and the orientations that your app supports when a user rotates the device.

Visual Studio has a manifest designer that makes it easy for you to update the manifest file without editing the raw XML of the file.

From the Packaging tab, you can enter publishing data. This is where you can choose which certificate to use to sign your app. All Universal Windows Apps must be signed with a certificate. In order to sideload an app package, you need to trust the package. The certificate must be installed on that device to trust the package. Learn more about sideloading onto Windows 10 devices.

Save your file after you have made the necessary edits for your app.

Create an app package

To distribute an app through the Store you must create an appxupload package. You can do that by using the Create App Packages wizard. Follow these steps to create a package suitable for store submission with Visual Studio 2015:

To create your app package

In Solution Explorer, open the solution for your Universal Windows app project.

Right-click the project and choose Store->Create App Packages. If this option is disabled or does not appear at all, check that the project is a Universal Windows project.

The Create App Packages wizard appears.

Select Yes in the first dialog asking if you want to build packages to upload to the Windows Store, then click Next.

If you choose No here, Visual Studio will not generate the required .appxupload package you need for store submission. If you only want to sideload your app to run it on internal devices, then you can select this option. Learn how to set up your devices for sideloading with Windows 10.

Sign in with your developer account to the Windows Dev Center. (If you don’t have a developer account yet, the wizard will help you create one.)

Select the app name for your package, or reserve a new one if you have not already reserved one with the Windows Dev Center portal.

Make sure you select all three architecture configurations (x86, x64, and ARM) in the Select and Configure Packages dialog. That way your app can be deployed to the widest range of devices. In the Generate app bundle listbox, select Always. This makes the store submission process much simpler because you will only have one file to upload (.appxupload). The single bundle will contain all the necessary packages to deploy to devices with each processor architecture.

It is a good idea to include full PDB symbol files for the best crash analytics experience from the Windows Dev Center. You can learn more about debugging with symbols here.

Now you can configure the details to create your package. When you’re ready to publish your app, you’ll upload the packages from the output location.

Click Create to generate your appxupload package.

Now you will see this dialog:

Validate your app before you submit it to the Store for certification on a local or remote machine. (You can only validate release builds for your app package and not debug builds.)

If you have a remote Windows 10 device, that you want to use for testing, you will need to install the Windows App Certification Kit manually on that device. The next section will walk you through these steps. Once you’ve done that, then you can select Remote machine and click Launch Windows App Certification Kit to connect to the remote device and run the validation tests.

After WACK has finished and your app has passed, you are ready to upload to the store. Make sure you upload the correct file. It can be found in the root folder of your solution \[AppName]\AppPackages and it will end with .appxupload file extension. The name will be of the form [AppName]_[AppVersion]_x86_x64_arm_bundle.appxupload.

Sideload your app package

With Universal Windows app packages, you cannot simply install an app to your device like Desktop apps for example. Typically, you download these apps from the Store and that is how they are installed on your device. But you can sideload apps to your device without submitting them to the Store. This lets you install them and test them out using the app package (.appx) that you have created. If you have an app that you don’t want to sell in the Store, like a line-of-business (LOB) app, you can sideload that app so that other users in your company can use it.

To sideload your app package to a Windows 10 device, follow these steps:

Install an app to a desktop, laptop, or tablet

Copy the folders for the version that you want to install to the target device.

If you’ve created an app bundle, then you will have a folder based on the version number and an _test folder. For example these two folders (where the version to install is 1.0.2):

C:\Projects\MyApp\MyApp\AppPackages\MyApp_1.0.2.0

C:\Projects\MyApp\MyApp\AppPackages\MyApp_1.0.2.0_Test

If you don’t have an app bundle, then you can just copy the folder for the correct architecture and the corresponding test folder. For example these two folders:

C:\Projects\MyApp\MyApp\AppPackages\MyApp_1.0.2.0_x64

C:\Projects\MyApp\MyApp\AppPackages\MyApp_1.0.2.0_x64_Test

On the target device, open the test folder. For example: C:\Projects\MyApp\MyApp\AppPackages\MyApp_1.0.2.0_Test.

Right-click the Add-AppDevPackage.ps1 file, then choose Run with PowerShell and follow the prompts.

When the app package has been installed, you will see this message in your PowerShell window: Your app was successfully installed.

Note

To open the shortcut menu on a tablet, touch the screen where you want to right-click, hold until a complete circle appears, and then lift your finger. The shortcut menu appears after you lift your finger.

Click the Start button and then type the name of your app to launch it.

Q&A

Q: How do I create a developer account from Visual Studio?

A: From the Project menu, choose Store -> Open Developer Account. This opens the Dev Center for Store apps. From there, you can create a develop account, which you’ll need to upload apps to the Store. Learn more about the App Developer Agreement.

Q: How do I reserve a name for my app? How long is it reserved for?

A: From the Project menu, choose Store -> Reserve App Name. Sign in to the Store. After your credentials are checked, you can reserve a name for your app. When the Store is open for app submissions, you can reserve an app name for one year. If you don’t submit an app within the next year, the reservation expires, and another developer could reserve the name. Learn more about naming and describing your app.

Q: Can I associate my app with the Store?

A: From the Project menu, choose Store -> Associate App with the Store. If you do this, you can test purchase and notification scenarios in your app. When you associate your app with the Store, these values are downloaded to the app manifest file for the current project on your local machine:

Package Display Name

Package Name

Publisher ID

Publisher Display Name

Version

If you override the default package.appxmanifest file by creating a custom .xml file for the manifest, you can’t associate your app with the Store. If you try to associate a custom manifest file with the Store, you will see an error message.

Q: How do I take screenshots of my app to use when I submit it to the Store?

A: From the Project menu, choose Store -> Capture Screenshots. This builds the current project and launches the app in the simulator. When the simulator opens, choose the Copy screenshot button on the simulator side bar.

Q: How do I upload my app package to the Store?

A: From the Project menu, choose Store -> Upload App Packages. Sign in to the Store. After your credentials are checked, the Dashboard opens. If you reserved a name for your app, you will use this tool to edit the existing release. If you didn’t reserve the name, choose Submit a new app, and then follow the instructions on the screen.

Q: How do I install a certificate and my app package separately?

A: Open the folder that contains the PowerShell script to install your app package. For example, C:\Projects\MyApp\MyApp\AppPackages\MyApp_1.0.6.0_Test.

Double-click the certificate file in the folder, and then click Install Certificate. This displays the Certificate Import Wizard.

In the Store Location group, tap the radio button to change the selected option to Local Machine.

Click Next.

Tap OK to confirm the UAC dialog.

In the next screen of the Certificate Import Wizard, change the selected option to Place all certificates in the following store.

Tap the Browse button. In the Select Certificate Store pop-up window, scroll down and select Trusted People, and then tap OK.

Q: Why use an app bundle?

A: Users can download faster with an app bundle because they only download the assets that they need. If your app contains language-specific resources, a variety of image scales, or resources that apply to specific versions of DirectX, you should generate an app bundle. If you don't generate one, your app will run just fine, but your users will have to download a larger app. Learn more about app bundles.

One app bundle can contain the packages for all architectures, so you only need one bundle per app.

If you create an app bundle, you can submit your app to the Store more easily. You only have to upload one .appx file - no matter how many architectures your app supports. For example, only one upload to support x86 and x64. If you don't create an app bundle, you must upload an .appx file for all supported architectures.

Q: How do I create images to handle all the different screen resolutions for Windows 10 devices?

A: You can add different versions of each image that identify your app using the package manifest designer - image assets in your app, logos and splash screen images. Then, you can test them to ensure that they look good on a variety of devices that have different screen resolutions. Learn how to manage and organize file and image resources for these and other images.

When thinking about different screen resolutions for your Windows 10 devices, it’s also important to create a responsive design for Universal Windows apps.

Q: How can I localize the description of my app for users?

A: You can make your app more attractive to international audiences by localizing its display name, description, and other identifying features, which are described in the package manifest file. Learn how to load resource files based on the language. Go to the Loading strings from the app manifest section in that topic.

Q: Can I create an app package from the command prompt?

A: Yes. You can run MSBuild from a Visual Studio command prompt, or use Team Foundation Build.

Open a Visual Studio command prompt, and then build the app project with MSBuild. If you don’t specify any additional flags or targets, MSBuild creates the app package in the same location as the other build output of the project. By default, that output appears in a project-specific sub-folder. For example:

MSBuild MyApp.csproj /p:OutDir=C:\builds\droplocation\

The app package and other build output would then be created in the following location:

C:\builds\droplocation\MyApp\

To select a specific configuration and platform that you build for the package, you can add this parameter:

/p:Platform=x86;Configuration=Release

/p:Platform=x86;Configuration=Release

Q: How can I setup which resources are installed on a device?

A: Use the Resource Management System that has a tool to help you create Package Resource Index (PRI) files with the MakePRI tool. Each PRI file contains a named collection of resources, referred to as a resource map.

Q: The PowerShell script for the app package doesn’t run. Why?

A: If the PowerShell script doesn’t run and there is no error message, the user access control (UAC) on the machine might have been changed. The default UAC setting is Notify me only when apps try to make changes to my computer (default), but it can be changed to Never notify me. If you use a standard user account to log on to a machine whose UAC is set to Never notify me, any changes that require administrator permissions are automatically denied. Under these circumstances, the PowerShell script starts but requires administrative permissions to continue. The UAC dialog box doesn't appear, and Windows automatically prevents the script from making changes. To resolve this issue, either change the UAC setting or run the script as an administrator.